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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 3543633" data-attributes="member: 3424">So what are the deeper beliefs at work that you are worried about agreeing to? Frankly, I don't see anything controversial about the proposition that a DM should spend more time detailing the elements that are more likely to get used in his game, which to me is essentially what Hussar is advocating with his &quot;adventures first&quot; approach.Now, a 600-page setting bible in itself is not necessarily inconsistent with an &quot;adventures first&quot; approach. The issue is how the DM arrived at the 600-page setting bible, and what he sacrificed in order to get it. Did the DM simply buy up every campaign sourcebook for the setting? If so, then he has acquired the information with relatively little effort, and (presumably) he can focus his attention on crafting adventures set in that world. For the same reason, creating a detailed world as a commercial product is not wasted effort, as it makes the information on the world available for purchase, thus allowing DMs to spend more time on creating adventures instead of worldbuilding.Similarly, if the setting bible was the result of years of crafting adventures, every element in the bible would have been there because it was featured in an adventure in the first place. The net result is still worldbuilding, but the adventures came first.Where worldbuilding can become a problem is when the effort spent on building the world comes at the expense of adventure preparation. In the extreme case, a DM might have to fall back on his improvisation skills, but using them to come up with adventures on the fly instead of setting on the fly.Of course, that is an extreme example, and it could also be argued that the distinction between worldbuilding and adventure preparation is so fine, especially at the &quot;elements that a DM is likely to use in an adventure&quot; side of the worldbuilding continuum, that it might not even exist. And if that is the case, what are we arguing about again? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 3543633, member: 3424"] So what are the deeper beliefs at work that you are worried about agreeing to? Frankly, I don't see anything controversial about the proposition that a DM should spend more time detailing the elements that are more likely to get used in his game, which to me is essentially what Hussar is advocating with his "adventures first" approach. Now, a 600-page setting bible in itself is not necessarily inconsistent with an "adventures first" approach. The issue is how the DM arrived at the 600-page setting bible, and what he sacrificed in order to get it. Did the DM simply buy up every campaign sourcebook for the setting? If so, then he has acquired the information with relatively little effort, and (presumably) he can focus his attention on crafting adventures set in that world. For the same reason, creating a detailed world as a commercial product is not wasted effort, as it makes the information on the world available for purchase, thus allowing DMs to spend more time on creating adventures instead of worldbuilding. Similarly, if the setting bible was the result of years of crafting adventures, every element in the bible would have been there because it was featured in an adventure in the first place. The net result is still worldbuilding, but the adventures came first. Where worldbuilding can become a problem is when the effort spent on building the world comes at the expense of adventure preparation. In the extreme case, a DM might have to fall back on his improvisation skills, but using them to come up with adventures on the fly instead of setting on the fly. Of course, that is an extreme example, and it could also be argued that the distinction between worldbuilding and adventure preparation is so fine, especially at the "elements that a DM is likely to use in an adventure" side of the worldbuilding continuum, that it might not even exist. And if that is the case, what are we arguing about again? :) [/QUOTE]

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